It’s 3:35 a.m. in the morning. I am standing in an open doorway, peering into a dark wood, wearing only a pair of thermal long johns. Snow is drifting onto my face from a moonlit sky. My heart is pounding. And I am holding an axe.

I never thought I’d work a job that was dictated by human shit. But things change. When you’re responsible for following men around and cleaning up after them it’s, at best, funny and humbling, and at worst, humiliating.

The fire in the tobacco barn was starting to rage, and inside was the most wanted man in America: John Wilkes Booth, the traitor who had shot President Abraham Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre 12 days earlier.

Stephen Torres was meeting with a client at his law office, in downtown Albuquerque, on April 12, 2011, when he received a call from a neighbor, who told him that police officers were aiming rifles at his house. He left work and drove to his home, in a middle-class suburb with a view of the mountains. There were more than forty police vehicles on his street.

You heard me right: Come in. No, you won’t disturb a soul in this locker room. They’re all lost in that place most folks go maybe once or twice in a lifetime, when their mamas or daddies die or their children are born, a place they don’t go nearly as often as they should. Trust me, these boys will never know you’re here.

The two fingers were found along the main road that borders the Camilo Torres barrio, in the Valley of Cauca, port of Buenaventura, in southwest Colombia. At least, that’s what the girl told the police.

I am afraid of the cops. Absolutely petrified of the cops. Now understand, I’ve never been arrested or held for questioning. I’ve never been told that I “fit the description.” But that doesn’t change a thing. I am afraid of cops the way that spiders are afraid of boots.